The Daily Nightly began on May 31, 2005. As Brian wrote in his first post it aims to provide a narrative of the broadcast day and a window into the editorial process at NBC Nightly News. Brian weighs in every weekday and NBC News correspondents and producers post regularly.
Brian Williams became the seventh anchor and managing editor in the history of NBC Nightly News on December 2, 2004. Read his full biography.
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New York Police Department officials are dismissing video of a “Taliban suicide-bomber graduation” as “part of a media blitz intended to spread Taliban propaganda and raise the profile of the organization” rather than a real threat.
In a special analysis distributed this week to NYPD commanders, the department’s counter-terrorism division also downplays the Taliban’s capability of carrying out suicide attacks in the U.S. and Europe, as the Taliban commander suggested, saying they do not have the needed networks in the West and have no experience carrying out such attacks.
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Link to thisThe arrests this week of key operatives of an Indonesian terrorist group is significant, says a senior U.S. counterterrorism official, but neither of the men were responsible for the deadliest terrorist attack in Indonesia, the December 2002 bombing of a Bali nightclub that killed 202 people, including five Americans.
The two -- Abu Dujana and Zarkasih -- were grabbed this week and identified as the leader and military commander of Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian terrorist group blamed for the Bali bombing. However, the official said the U.S. does not believe the two men were part of the planning or execution of the attack.
"It's a serious setback," said the official. "I can tell you we're happy they're off the street. It's a significant event."
Discuss (1 comments) Email this | Link to thisWith Russian President Vladimir Putin threatening to target missiles on Europe if the U.S. goes ahead with antimissile plans in Eastern Europe, what is the status of the world's nuclear arsenals? One would think that with the Cold War over for more than 15 years, the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Russia would be limited.
Not so.
Estimates by the Federation of Atomic Scientists (FAS) put the number of nuclear weapons still operational in the two countries at more than 10,000 -- enough to destroy all human life many times over, but less than what it was during the height of the Cold War.
Discuss (23 comments) Email this | Link to thisGoogle Maps new feature, "Street View," has a predecessor in the intelligence community. Street View incorporates stills taken by Google staff into their well known satellite photo/map format.
The CIA has been doing the same thing for years, to help their officers familiarize themselves with cities and other areas they had never visited and that may be closed to Americans.
The CIA would take satellite photos of an area and then create 3D videos. They'd also add to the experience by inserting stills their foreign agents had taken at ground level, or that the agency would have acquired elsewhere. Officers about to visit a new city could then sit in front of a screen and take a "virtual walk" down a street they had never visited, using a joystick much like a teenage boy would with a video game, crossing streets and turning corners.
The technology has existed for nearly 15 years. CIA visualization specialists talked with NBC's Jamie Gangel and me back in 1993.
Discuss (5 comments) Email this | Link to thisSix men described by federal prosecutors as "Islamic militants" were arrested on charges they plotted to attack the Fort Dix Army base and "kill as many soldiers as possible," authorities said Tuesday.
A former senior U.S. intelligence official tells NBC News do not lose sight of the role the Internet played in inspiring these prospective jihadis. The FBI affidavits note that among the materials used in organizing, training and proselytizing the jihadis were al-Qaida training videos, the video wills of two 9-11 hijackers, and videos of U.S. soldiers being killed in Iraq.
Discuss (30 comments) Email this | Link to thisIn his State of the Union address last night, President Bush talked for the first time about the threat of Shia extremism, placing it and the leading Shia extremist group, Hezbollah, alongside Sunni extremism, and al-Qaida, as threats to the United States.
Speaking of al-Qaida, the President stated: "These men are not given to idle words, and they are just one camp in the Islamist radical movement. In recent times, it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East. Many are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists like Hezbollah, a group second only to al-Qaida in the American lives it has taken.
Discuss (11 comments) Email this | Link to thisU.S. officials are providing more details about the impending resignation of National Intelligence Director John Negroponte and nomination of Adm. Mike McConnell.
The White House has been trying for more than a year to get Negroponte to take the No. 2 job at State and have McConnell replace him. On at least two, and possibly three occasions within the past 18 months, the White House approached each man about taking a new job.
Discuss (3 comments) Email this | Link to thisNBC's Robert Windrem offers on our sister blog 'Hardblogger' his commentary on one of the most searing images of Saddam Hussein’s brutal reign, and also one of the first: a purloined Ba’ath Party video of the new Iraqi president watching as his henchmen arrested party members at a 1979 party conference in Baghdad.
Discuss (5 comments) Email this | Link to thisFBI officials say they sent an advisory to local law enforcement agencies last week, informing them that the Blind Sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman, could be near death. His death, the notice says, might lead to attempts at reprisal.
But today, officials say his condition improved and that he is now stable. They believe his death is no longer imminent. They also say they have no specific intelligence of any actual plan to attack the U.S. in retaliation.
Discuss (24 comments) Email this | Link to thisCurrent and former U.S. officials say no U.S. intelligence agency ever targeted Princess Diana for intelligence collection.
Their comments follow stories over the weekend in British papers, reporting that U.S. intelligence agencies were spying on her. Some say her phone calls were being monitored, and some say specifically that it was done by the U.S. Secret Service. These stories are said to be based on the British report due out later this week on her death.
However, Homeland Security and U.S. Secret Service officials today say it is untrue that the Secret Service ever gathered intel information on Diana. "The Secret Service had nothing to do with it," the official says.
Separately, a former senior U.S. intelligence official says Princess Diana was never targeted for intelligence gathering in any way. But, the former official says, her voice MAY have been picked up while others were targeted. Even so, he says that as far as he knows, there were no intercepts of her in Paris the night she died, contrary to what the British papers are reporting.
Discuss (4 comments) Email this | Link to thisYesterday’s White House visit by Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of Iraq's Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, points up once again the role Iran could play in Iraqi affairs. Like so many of Iraq's leaders, many of Iraq's political leaders spend years in exile in Iran, escaping the horrors of Saddam Hussein's prosecution of Shi'a and Kurd alike.
And while the U.S. isn't about to publicize the friendly ties between Iraq's leaders and Iran's, the President of Iran has no problem talking about them.
In his interview with Brian Williams in September, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad happily described his good relations with the Iraqi power structure. (Click to watch the interview from NBC Nightly News on Sept. 19.)
"The Iraqi President (Jalal Talibani) is an old friend of mine," Ahmadinejad told Williams. "The head of the state, the Prime Minister (Nouri al-Maliki) is a very close friend of mine too. And the head of their parliament, the parliamentary speaker (Mahmoud al-Mashhadani), is a good friend of mine too, so we're all friends."
Discuss (4 comments) Email this | Link to thisA source inside the Joint Chiefs of Staff tells our NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin that there was a fight between Vice President Dick Cheney and President Bush's political team prior to the election. Cheney said Rumsfeld should stay. Political types, led by White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, wanted him gone.
The decision was made to delay the decision until after the election. Then, based on how the GOP did, it would be the president's decision. After the Republicans lost the House and may lose the Senate, President Bush agreed that Rumsfeld should go. According to Arkin's source, Cheney fought a second battle on the replacement. He thought they needed someone strong, someone ideological. He lost again.
Discuss (56 comments) Email this | Link to thisA senior U.S. intelligence official tells NBC News that the U.S. believes Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque's comments about Fidel Castro constitute "expectations adjustment" on Castro's health.
Perez Roque had been optimistic about Castro being present for his postponed 80th birthday celebration on December 2, but in an interview today with The Associated Press, he stepped back from any guarantees, saying the important thing is that Castro's recovery is "advanced." U.S. and other officials have been anticipating the Dec. 2 event, believing it would be an indicator of just how healthy the Cuban president is, following his emergency abdominal surgery in late July.
Discuss (0 comments) Email this | Link to thisIn a country of abject poverty, where millions have died of malnutrition and starvation and where large concentration camps can be found, North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il lives well. Outside Pyongyang, a facility known as "Residence No. 55" is the official residence of North Korea's president. While Kim has other residences, this, say U.S. and Japanese officials, is the main one.
Satellite photo provided to NBC News by GeoEye.
Discuss (8 comments) Email this | Link to thisNorth Korea is a notoriously closed society, so how is it we know when they've tested a nuclear weapon? The Internet, of course. The U.S. Geological Service's Earthquake Information Center keeps an automated, up-to-the-minute, list of seismic events of more than 2.5 magnitude on its Web site. The page does not automatically refresh, so hit F5 on your keyboard to get the latest list if you leave the site up for an extended period of time. The data from the quake, including its magnitude, time, and very specific location are recorded automatically.
The first North Korean test on Oct. 8, although small by nuclear weapons standards (about 1/12th of the Hiroshima bomb) still registered as a 4.2 magnitude seismic event. It showed up within minutes. Similarly, when the Japanese broadcast network NHK reported last week that North Korea may have detonated a second nuclear weapon, we were able to go to the site, and seeing no evidence of seismic activity, question the report.
Of equal importance is the location data. It is very specific. Using either Google Earth or satellite photos provided to our graphics department, we can determine the precise location very quickly.
Discuss (0 comments) Email this | Link to thisU.S. officials say that we should expect a series of tapes this week from al-Qaida, leading up to a message, probably from Osama bin Laden himself, just before the anniversary.
Citing analysis rather than intelligence, the officials say that today's tape followed by four days the Ayman al-Zawahri/Adam Gadahn tape on Saturday. "It's a logical progression from this to a message on or just before the anniversary," said one official.
Either Bin Laden or Zawahri has posted a message on or just before every anniversary since 2002 and with this being the fifth anniversary, we should expect more, said the official.
Today's tape is the most elaborate since the first anniversary, when the al-Qaida production company, al-Shahab, released video of the 9/11 plotters going over airline schedules prior to the attacks.
Another official noted the tapes are directed primarily at the U.S. audience, not an Islamic audience, noting the use of Gadahn, an American, on the weekend tape and the use of English subtitles in today's tape.
Discuss (3 comments) Email this | Link to thisThe basketball boards around the Internet are buzzing today with anger and confusion. American fans are in a deep funk about the U.S. loss to Greece in the semifinals. "Greece!" they say. "Greece? They don’t play basketball in GREECE!"
Oh yes, they do.
Greece is the reigning European champion and their teams in the Euroleague -- world’s second-best professional league after the NBA -- are always among the top five.
But the posters and bloggers analyzing and criticizing are all in denial, if you ask me.
Discuss (53 comments) Email this | Link to thisA news story that hit the wires this weekend with little notice may in fact signal an uptick in the strategic chess game that is the Middle East.
Iran announced that it had fired an “anti-ship missile” from one of its Kilo-class submarines during a military exercise in the northern Arabian Sea not far from the Strait of Hormuz, the entrance to the Persian Gulf.
Discuss (7 comments) Email this | Link to thisIts seems everyone today has a blog, from lonely teenagers to hyperbolic sports fans to esteemed anchors of evening news broadcasts.
But one of the newest blogs takes the phenomenon one step further. Mahmood Ahmadinejad, his excellency the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has in the past few weeks set up a blog of his own, in four languages. The blog seeks comments from around the world and has pages in Farsi, Arabic, English and French. It features a photo of the Iranian president, an engineer and scientist by training, writing at a desk and offers typical blog fare: a welcoming statement, a question of the day and a space for comments.
Not surprisingly, the English page has had few viewers. Hani A. asks" "Al Salam Alaikum, I hope you could make the font of the words little bigger so that reading could be easier. Salem, Hani."
Discuss (4 comments) Email this | Link to thisThe scenes of devastation in Beirut and southern Lebanon are likely to increase the perception among Arabs and Muslims that they are under attack, that recent history is not about being “humiliated” or “impoverished” but instead about being the subject of genocide.
It is a common theme among radical Islamists: that the West is bent on eliminating Muslims everywhere -- a Muslim Holocaust, if you will, akin to what happened to the Armenians at the hands of the Turks or what happened to the Jews at the hands of the Nazis.
It is their justification for much of what the West sees as terrorism, but what the radical Islamists see as war.
It is also, in fact, a reference increasingly finding its way into the Muslim consciousness. And while the West may see the number of dead across the Islamic world as evidence of disparate wars or sectarian violence or in some cases, war crimes, the Muslim perspective, whether moderate or radical, is quite different.
Discuss (189 comments) Email this | Link to thisWho is Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the man who leads Hezbollah, who controls what some have called the world's best irregular army, who has moved Hezbollah from a purely terrorist organization to a Lebanese political party with two seats in the nation's cabinet?
What he may be is the next generation of Shiite leaders -- a man capable of leading a state within a state, a transitional figure between Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomenei, and Moqtada al Sadr, the leader of Baghdad's three milliion Shiites, and a man still capable of reminding Americans who first used car bombs against U.S. targets.
Discuss (40 comments) Email this | Link to thisWhat levers does the U.S. possess to pressure Israel -- if indeed it wanted to? The list is long -- from weapons deals to direct financing of Israel's military spending to special foreign aid packages.
The authors of a report (.PDF link) issued last week by the World Policy Institute (WPI) lays it out simply: "The billions of U.S. arms and aid it provides every year gives the Bush administration substantial leverage in pressing Israel for a cease fire in its attacks on Lebanon," notes William D. Hartung, a senior fellow at the WPI in New York.
Discuss (202 comments) Email this | Link to thisThis is the 14th audio or video tape released this year by Ayman al-Zawahri or Osama bin Laden and the ninth by Zawahri.
Senior U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials tell NBC News that while the production -- and even promotional -- apparatus has grown increasingly sophisticated, the main point of the messages remains the same as it has been for the past several years: Al-Qaida wants to show themselves as relevant within the jihadist movement by commenting on any major event in the Muslim world, whether it be a new French law outlawing head scarves or a war between Muslims and Israelis in Lebanon.
Discuss (8 comments) Email this | Link to thisSenior U.S. counterterrorism officials say they are "mindful of and thinking about" the possibility that Hezbollah could reach out beyond Israel and attack Israeli -- and even Jewish -- interests around the world.
And should things become desperate, attacks against the United States and its interests could also be possible.
Discuss (6 comments) Email this | Link to thisEditor’s note: Much of the information here was first published in “Critical Mass: The Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a Fragmenting World,” by William E. Burrows and Robert Windrem.
Israel is the victim of the changing nature of war.
For decades, it prepared for the apocalypse, building a nuclear deterrent force the equal of a superpower, only to have its national security threatened by a few thousand guerilla armed with small arms and short-range rockets.
Israel is believed to have more than 200 nuclear weapons, made up of five different classes of weapons -- missile warheads, aerial bombs, nuclear landmines, etc. Israel built its first two bombs in late 1966, according to "Israel and the Bomb," a new book by Israeli political scientist Avner Cohen.
Discuss (8 comments) Email this | Link to thisOne thing U.S. officials say that has not been given much attention is the strategic advantage Israel could gain from taking out Hezbollah.
If Israel wants the option of taking out Iranian missile/nuclear facilities, it has to know that in response, Iran would unleash Hezbollah -- that is, play the terrorism card.
Discuss (2 comments) Email this | Link to thisA senior U.S. intelligence official says that Hezbollah has enough rockets to keep up the current pace "for a considerable amount of time, many weeks, possibly months" without resupply from Iran. The numbers, he said, will depend on how many rockets Hezbollah fires as well as how many the Israelis can take out. The official said the stockpile is not being resupplied. Israel took out the runways at Beirut International Airport, smaller airfields, as well as highways and bridges to prevent such resupply. Asked about Israeli reports that Hezbollah had a stockpile of 13,000 rockets -- including shorter range Katyushas and medium range Fajr-3 -- the official declined to comment, but would not dismiss a suggestion that the number is in the thousands. They are "knee deep in rockets," he said.
Discuss (5 comments) Email this | Link to thisAfter Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the most sought-after terrorist is Imad Mugnyiah, a Lebanese Shi'ite who lives in Beirut. NBC News has learned that U.S. counterterrorism agencies -– the CIA, DoD, FBI -- are constantly pursuing Mugniyah, who until Sept. 11 was the terrorist responsible for more American deaths than any other. Mugniyah is no doubt one of the targets of the Israeli attacks, said one U.S. official.
A little-known but powerful Hezbollah leader, Mugniyah moves freely around Beirut. But on occasion, he travels outside Lebanon and the U.S. tries to keep close tabs on him, even though he uses phony passports and aliases when he travels.
Discuss (18 comments) Email this | Link to thisAnalysts say there are two possible reasons and they are not mutually exclusive. Israel wants to keep Iranian arms from getting in and Israeli captives from being flown out.
Beirut Airport has long been key to Iran's supply of all kinds of material to Hezbollah. Iran's Revolutionary Guard has supplied Hezbollah with more than $1 billion of supplies over the past 25 years, say U.S. intelligence officials, as much as $150 million a year during tense times. The majority of it is flown in on an Iranian 747 cargo jet that unloads at Beirut Airport, where Hezbollah agents pick it up and drive it to the Bekkah valley south of the Lebanese capital. Anti-aircraft batteries, Katyusha rockets, armored vehicles, small arms, anti-tank missiles, etc. have all been sent. Beirut is the only airport in Lebanon capable of handling that 747. The initial deployment was in 1982 with planes bringing in supplies as needed. By the 1990s the flights had fallen to a quarterly routine. With Hezbollah under fire in Israel, now would be a time to resupply.
Discuss (1269 comments) Email this | Link to thisMany of the men who were arrested this weekend in southern Ontario met in Internet chatrooms. Some, officials say, had met only online and others had extensive dealings with like-minded Islamic radicals around the world -- again online. How does this happen?
A few years ago, an intelligence official told me that al-Qaida was using sports chatrooms to communicate. It seemed bizarre until I decided to join a couple to see just what opportunities there were out there.
It didn't take long for me to be drawn into a larger online community, this one focused on the New Jersey Nets, the NBA team in my home state. I didn't want to join a chatroom that might present a conflict for me. I didn't want, for example, to be tempted into using some material I had obtained for NBC in order to win an argument and I didn't want my personal opinions confusing my objectivity.
Discuss (3 comments) Email this | Link to thisPresident Bush's reported choice of Steve Kappes as deputy director of the CIA is a direct slap in the face of outgoing CIA Director Porter Goss, according to current and former intelligence officials. Kappes had been head of the CIA's clandestine service, the Directorate of Operations, when Goss arrived.
Goss's chief of staff, Patrick Murray, ordered Kappes to fire his deputy Mike Sulick, but Kappes said that the order would have to come from Goss. Goss reportedly told Kappes that he "didn't do personnel" and should do what Walsh had asked him. Kappes refused and resigned.
Discuss (11 comments) Email this | Link to thisToday's Pentagon briefing on how the U.S. almost caught al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri raises issues about the whereabouts of other wanted al-Qaida members, as do Zacarias Moussaoui's comments today at his sentencing.
Here's what the U.S. government thinks they know about Osama bin Laden, Zawahiri and al-Qaida's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:
1. Bin Laden is believed to be staying put, rather than moving constantly. The belief is that he spends his time in one location and not with an entourage that would attract attention. He is believed to travel with at least one of his four wives, a Yemeni woman he married in 2001 when she was 17, younger than several of his older children.
Discuss (27 comments) Email this | Link to thisAnother reminder, as if we needed any, about the fragility of a free press in Iraq, this time from the CIA.
It’s been widely reported that more than 60 Iraqi reporters and editors have been kidnapped and murdered since the fall of Baghdad. Now over the past few days, according to the CIA, Iraqi insurgents have begun an intimidation campaign against newspaper vendors and distributors. The information is contained in an internal CIA analysis obtained by NBC News.
Most of the intimidation has been focused in Baghdad, say agency analysts, and has included firebombing and notes warning those who print or distribute newspapers that they face death if they continue.
Discuss (5 comments) Email this | Link to thisAt the 2:30 p.m. ET editorial meeting we had a lively discussion of what the context should be for our coverage of the Muslim rioting over publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
The bottom line for me was that this can't be dealt with as a story about cartoons or even about Islamic prohibitions about the depiction of Muhammad. It has to be about the simmering pot that went to boil, as Shibley Telhami, the University of Maryland scholar, said this morning on Washington radio. He noted that this is the Islamic version of the Rodney King verdict. In that case, it wasn't just about the verdict against four Los Angeles policemen. It was about African-Americans' belief, whether based on reality or perception, that they had been the victims of decades of racism and thuggery by the LAPD.
On a larger scale, there seems to be in our culture an ability to deny that, in spite of all our good intentions, we are returning to the clash of civilizations that defined most of world history. And that to ignore how a significant portion of the world feels denies us the opportunity to understand what is going on. One of the things I tried to point out was the Islamic belief that they feel they are being targeted, personally, as well as politically.
Discuss (49 comments) Email this | Link to thisThe director of the CIA's Counter Terrorism Center has resigned under pressure, telling his staff that his boss, the head of the CIA's Clandestine Service, has "lost confidence in my leadership," U.S. intelligence officials tell NBC News.
The resignation is the most recent in a series of high level departures at the agency. A CIA official declined to comment, saying it was the agency's practice not to comment on personnel issues.
Discuss (35 comments) Email this | Link to thisYesterday I posted that the book Osama bin Laden mentioned in his recent audio tape was languishing at 209,572 on Amazon.com's book list. Well, take a look again today: "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower" by William Blum is, at this writing, ranked #43! According to Amazon, that means it is the 43rd best-selling book in their library. Amazing.
Discuss (17 comments) Email this | Link to thisOsama bin Laden has taken a page from Oprah Winfrey and is recommending a book to Americans, by an American. In his latest audio message, he suggests Americans read "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower" by William Blum. Here are his words, as translated by the CIA Open Source Center:
"...it is useful for you to read the book of "Rogue State," the introduction of which reads: 'If I were a president, I would halt the operations against the United States [sic]. First, I will extend my apologies to the widows, orphans, and the persons who were tortured. Afterwards, I will announce that the U.S. interference in the world countries has ended forever.'"
"Rogue State" was originally published by Common Courage Press in Monroe, Maine in 2000 and updated in 2005. It is ranked 209,572 on Amazon.com's book list, down about 4,000 from yesterday.
Discuss (4 comments) Email this | Link to thisSenior U.S. counterterrorism officials cannot say for certain why al-Qaida chose today and an audio message by Bin Laden to raise its profile, but here is one analysis that is circulating:
Al-Qaida understood it had to do something to counter the Predator attack in Damodola last Thursday. In the face of reports that significant al-Qaida leaders, perhaps even No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri, had been killed, al-Qaida needed to reestablish itself as a viable entity.
Discuss (6 comments) Email this | Link to thisToday's audio tape would mark the first time we have heard from Osama bin Laden via audio tape since December 2004, when he called for Iraqis to boycott the elections. Bin Laden has not appeared on camera since Oct. 29, 2004, right before the U.S. presidential election.
In the time between audio tape releases (Dec. 2004-Jan. 2006) Ayman al-Zawahiri has released seven tapes. He is the only man who can "speak" for Bin Laden.
U.S. counterterrorism officials say that their analysis of the tape is that it was recorded "months ago... post-earthquake", meaning sometime since October. The officials would not say why they believe that, but in the past, the U.S. has been able to get longer versions of tapes that air on Arab satellite channels. Don't ask me how. Moreover, some officials find it strange that al-Qaida would release a tape of Bin Laden, rather than Zawahiri, when the world is wondering about the fate of Zawahiri following Thursday's attack in Damodola, Pakistan.
Discuss (0 comments) Email this | Link to thisIt’s never the crime. It’s the cover-up.
There has been a lot of discussion about whether Patrick Fitzgerald will limit his charges to obstruction of justice, perjury and other “technicalities,” as some Republicans have described them, or go for an indictment on the underlying charge of violating the Identities Act. That Act forbids unauthorized disclosure of a clandestine intelligence officer’s identity.
Within five weeks of being appointed and within two weeks of hearing his first witnesses, Fitzgerald asked for and received permission from the Justice Department to expand his investigation into perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence and intimidation of witnesses.
In recent days, some on both the Left and the Right have suggested that such charges as these would make the prosecution “troubling” in that they don’t reach the level of gravitas that violating the Identities Act does. Somehow, they suggest, this would be either less satisfying [Left] or less serious [Right]…as if this was the first time such charges had been used in Washington scandals.
Discuss (14 comments) Email this | Link to this